"...And This Side Makes You Live Longer!"

In one of the legendary scenes in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the caterpillar, after exhaling his hookah, informs the young wanderer that, “One side will make you grow taller... and the other side will make you grow shorter.” Alice asks, “The other side of what?” “THE MUSHROOM, OF COURSE!” exclaims the caterpillar.

And now we learn that the inside of the mushroom will make you grow stronger, healthier, and likely help you to live better, longer. The caterpillars scientists over at Total Nutraceutical Solutions have introduced Ergo-D2(TM), “a breakthrough mushroom-based whole food natural ingredient formulated using proprietary TNS food technology that naturally enhances powerful bionutrients and antioxidants, such as L-Ergothioneine and vitamin D2, deficiencies of which have been implicated in inflammatory diseases such as heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis and even acute depression.” That seems a mouthful for the perch of a three-inch tall caterpillar, but studies have shown that decreased levels of Vitamin D have also been associated with osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, cancer of the breast, cardiovascular disease, and many others.

Rolled out at this years Institute of Food Technologist’s annual meeting in New Orleans, TNS highlights that Ergo-D2 will address the growing and worldwide vitamin D deficiency that has been found in all age groups and all nations. Vitamin D is found in very few foods. Historically, the best way to get your daily minimum requirements of this fat-soluble vitamin was to take all your clothes off and hang out in the sun and eat fatty-fleshed fish like mackerel. So fickle is Vitamin D that even applying sunscreen to your sensitive parts will block absorption.

Remember being spoon-fed cod liver oil as a child? Well, turns out that foul-tasting elixir of the sea is the single most potent source of vitamin D. Grandmother always knew best. According to world-famous and telegenic cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Oz, “too little vitamin D is our most critical vitamin deficiency. It’s a major risk factor for cancer, autoimmune problems, and heart disease.” Had grandma been up front about that, we might not have pushed the spoon away thinking she was just being old-school.

However, in order to get sufficient amounts of your daily D strictly from diet, one would need to eat pounds of fish and chase it with glass after glass after tall, cold glass of milk, all while standing nude in a sun-drenched field. Could make for some interesting television commercials. With people being told that the sun gives them cancer, it turns into a tricky Catch-22 – that which does not kill you makes you stronger?

Mushrooms to the rescue! As new processes are used to extract Vitamin D from the highly nutritious Agaricus blazei mushroom, producing dietary supplements rich in this important, and often overlooked, vitamin, Total Nutraceutical Solutions tells the Alice in all of us, “The inside makes you live longer and healthier lives.”

Thank you for your comments, and for reading. I always knew about the wide variety of different flavors that different mushrooms were capable of adding to almost any dish, but took their nutritional value for granted. I now eat them with renewed pleasure!